Meet the Man Who Buried the Atari Landfill Stash 30 Years Ago

A man has stepped forward claiming that he was the person who buried the stash of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in a landfill at Alamogordo, New Mexico.

KBOI News reports that James Heller claims that he was the person who was ordered by Atari to get rid of the 750,000 Atari 2600 cartridges, including the infamous E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, back in 1983. Hellers claims shoot down the urban legend that Atari employees sneaked out into the New Mexico desert in the middle of the night to illegally trash the games. Instead, everything was done by the book.

"I had been charged with getting rid of it as quickly and inexpensively as possible and so I did. That was my job," Heller said.

Heller says that after children raided the area where the Atari games were dumped, six truckloads of cement were used to cover the games. This was the same cement that construction workers had to breakthrough last month prior to excavating the landfill in search of the same games 30 years after they were buried.

"I looked at the article and I go, 'I did that!'" Heller added.

Heller claims that E.T. wasn't the only game buried there. Other games buried include thousands of copies of Centipede, Warlords and Missile Command for the Atari 2600.